So, I forgot to tell the thing to stop getting this show. As a result, when the first ep of the new season dropped, it appeared and decided to watch it for a laugh.
I made it 11 minutes into it before shutting it down. Here's the breakdown:
Zoe Saldana in tight fitting athleisure gear working out while a supercut of cable news about how chaotic the world outside the US plays. 2-3 minutes
Zoe Saldana in the shower naked. very creepy lingering close up on mouths during her makeout session with husband. 2-3 minutes.
Incoherent exposition from good guy US Intelligentsia about how China is bad because communism is when US universities have chinese students. also foreigners studying in and paying tuition to US schools is just generally bad. 5-6 minutes.
Complex set piece action sequence of masked assailants kidnapping Zoe in broad daylight in DC. Very watchable if you like action sequences. 2-3 minutes.
Timeskip back 6 months: Several outrageously jacked dudes and models in undercover tight-fighting athleisure on a stakeout at a university. Intrigue with foreign national points to RUSSIA.
this is where i turned it off. the spycraft-intrigue was getting too convoluted to parse, and the idea that all these absurdly jacked meatheads in their 40s could blend into the backdrop of college students on campus despite all of them wearing an athleisure uniform of drab army colors was too much.
this show started out kinda dumb, premise wise, in season 1. and each season has become more deranged with the world building. it's like if they made a third sicario that was as divergently bonkers from sicario 2 as 2 was to 1. if that makes sense.
like imagine if you blended every alarmist headline on OAN about the world outside the US and constructed reality from that chopped, incoherent and undifferentiated goop of american exceptionalist excretions. with high production values, fancy establishing shots, and apparently a pretty big budget for complex action sequences with guns, explosions, civilian/military vehicles, equipment and fight choreography. like, they seriously build this world and it is scary/violent! if you meet someone who loves this show, they should be monitored.
it would be totally watchable if it wasn't 75-80% unwatchable exposition of randomly mixed crank politics, straight from the industrial blender at Banana Town.
EDIT: OK, i watched the rest of S03E01. fucking recockulous. i'll spare you all the play by play, but two things standout.
the second half of the episode involves The Team going to Ukraine to steal a russian guy in a bunker. this involves releasing attack dogs to maul North Korean soldiers. like 3 dogs kill probably a dozen DPRK troops in a trench, who are depicted as childish clowns that can't aim. they make it a point to show the dogs mauling koreans and pulling their bodies apart, multiple times. content warning, a dog gets stabbed but is evacuated. all non-US people are executed, even the unarmed, injured and surrendering. i guess this is supposed to be cool? sheridan also repeatedly wails this unarmed russian guy who has surrendered and is screaming in pain because it will apparently be easier to kidnap him if he's all fucked up, concussed, and scared. they do this before sloppily cutting a tracking device out of the guy's armpit, because apparently russia puts trackers into all their important dudes.
there's also an extended sequence of exposition where our boy, Taylor Sheridan, appears as "Cody" the old, super tactical genius special forces cia supersoldier in a battlefield bunker to explain to everyone how he's the only one who understands the tactics of the Ukraine-Russian border conflict so all the other tactical genius special forces cia supersoldiers must do whatever he says. they also have this amazing diorama/battlefield model with scale accurate structures set up where "Cody" explains how this cool op is going to go. apparently explosive drone swarm + attack dogs is the unstoppable combo. "Cody" being cool, explains that only he knows How Shit Is™ while exaggeratedly eating this grey goop-soup out of an unlabeled catfood tin and saying "brother" too much. i think he thinks it makes him look cool, like how brad pitt eats in scenes all the time to look casual compared to everybody else.
he cast himself in S02 as the same "old special forces soldier who knows everything" role as well, and it was legitimately the most self-indulgent b.s. i have ever seen in media. until this entire sequence in the first ep of S03.
seriously, most times a writer puts themselves into a story, they have the decency to make fun of themselves. this asshole is like, "no actually i'm the most coolest badass that u can't even dream to imagine."
what a fucking loser. i legitimately hope he takes a tumble on set during filming and breaks his entire shit.